No-guns policy doesn't prevent guns on campus

According to Mr. Wilson, the "no guns allowed on campus" rule makes us safer. The problem with that is, the people who would use guns criminally are the ones who won't follow the rules. My freshman year in 1999, I lived in Room 117 in Apache-Santa Cruz Residence Hall. One night, a man walked into our room and he had a gun in the back of his pants. He was looking for someone who lived in our hall. He stumbled around my room, obviously drunk, before he left. (If you don't believe me, search the Wildcat archives from 1999. It was front-page news). Had he wanted to shoot my roommate and I that day, there's not a damn thing we could have done about it. The "no-guns" policy didn't stop him from coming into my room with a gun, but it did prevent me from having any way of defending myself had he decided to kill us. Also, if I recall correctly, the no-gun policy did nothing to protect the three women who were ruthlessly murdered in the Arizona Health Sciences Center last year. Maybe if a law-abiding citizen (notice no quotations around that) had been able to carry a weapon for defense, those brave women's lives could have been saved. The "weapons free zone" doesn't make us safer, Mr. Wilson; it makes us victims.

Anthony W. Nelson
UA alumnus, class of 2003

Renaming econ building after Chavez wrong

Please join me in asking the Arizona Board of Regents to oppose Monday's proposed renaming of the Economics building after notorious union organizer Cesar Chavez. President Likins is counting on Chavez' hazy name recognition value and race to garner support, while diverting attention from the controversial and destructive political ideas Chavez stands for.

Chavez marched with his worker followers and professional strike organizers under the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO, red flag decorated with an Aztec eagle of in a revolution whose goal was to strong-arm business owners into submission. Testimony has revealed that numerous workers joined at gunpoint or suffered stoning and other violent acts if they refused.

The constant threat of violence was his strikers' tool of choice in fighting a class war modeled after the socialist revolutions of Mexico and other Latin American and European countries. Socialism holds that each individual must be forced by the state to sacrifice their life, liberty and freely-traded property for the welfare of some collective mob. In opposition to the proper, individualistic education philosophy that views schooling as a means to improve one's life and future, Chavez echoed Hegel, Marx and Schopenhauer in saying: "The end of all education should surely be service to others."

Likins' support for a Chavez building is a slick political move to attempt to increase Hispanic enrollment to 25% and thereby qualify for big federal dollars. Slick because the suggestion that Chavez is the best man to attract Arizona's Hispanic population is a racist insult to anyone who measures his identity not by the color of his skin or by a check-list of entitlements but by his focus on individual excellence.

Regents must ensure that UA does not appear to hold the state Hispanic population to a different standard than other Arizonans. Arizona is a Right-to-Work State because we do not believe that people's rights and lives may be demanded by anyone; they are inalienable. Surely the naming advisory committee can propose a more appropriate name ÷ one on which all the occupants of the Economics building can agree.

Erik Flesch
geosciences senior
president, Student Objectivist Society

Suing regents disgusting, waste of taxpayers' money

I studied for my bachelor's degree at a private university. Most of my friends who did not have merit scholarships now have not thousands but tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to pay down. They all feel that their education was worth it. Most of us did not come from privileged backgrounds, yet we were all able to attend a private research university, at little to no expense to the taxpayer.

While it may not have been the case in our parents' day, merit scholarships,

private aid, the federal Pell grant, and the ubiquitous interest-deferred student loan combine to make a college education at almost any U.S. institution within reach of anybody with sufficient motivation and preparation who is willing to make the required sacrifices. In today's world, in a sense, a college education anywhere is nearly free.

Suing the Board of Regents because tuition has gone up to $3,604 ÷ nearly free, when compared to private institutions ÷ wastes the money of taxpayers, alumni and voluntary public contributions which should be used on academics. If this suit is, as plaintiff Rachel Wilson has suggested, a protest against prison construction, it is one of the most disgusting acts of political cynicism in recent memory.

Regardless, the clause in the state constitution which states that state-run instruction, including at the university, should be "as nearly free as possible" seems to be the product of either a socialist or a Candyland mentality. It turns what should be viewed as a service and a privilege into state-guaranteed right, and denies that students or their families are, to the best of their ability, responsible for providing their own education. This wild statement has now shown itself to be imprudent; the people of Arizona ought to amend their constitution to avoid further interference with the running of the university.

Ben Kalafut
first year optical sciences postgraduate student